The philosopher John Rawls suggested that the only ethical society is one which we design before we know what position we will hold in it. If you don’t know whether you’ll be born the child of janitor or a billionaire, black or white, you may view social justice differently than when you know that your [...]

After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a recent email urging supporters to sign a petition backing the wave of Occupy Wall Street protests, phones at the party committee started ringing.

The execs asked the lawmakers: “What are you doing? Do you even understand some of the things that they’ve called for?” said another lobbyist with financial services clients who is a former Democratic Senate aide.

…This cycle Democrats have a particularly tough sell, since they pushed through a financial regulatory reform law last year and Mitt Romney has emerged as a Republican presidential front-runner, whose deep Wall Street ties clash with Obama’s recent populist overtures. The lip service to occupiers is only hurting an already rocky relationship.

“You can’t have it both ways,” said one in-house financial services lobbyist. “It just makes it harder for people who are Democrats in New York, Boston, Chicago to on the one hand be demogagued and then be asked ‘Hey, you can get your picture with the president for $30,000.’ It doesn’t square.”

I never thought I would ever be able to see the banker’s point of view but I have to admit they are right. Democrats are notoriously fickle, disloyal and self-serving. I have been feeling the very same sense of anger toward the Democrats since they managed to get a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and then played a tricky little game of withholding one or two crucial votes that would have made the difference between good legislation for the 99% and a bill that has a nice sounding name and little else. Can we say Ben Nelson when it comes to abortion funding in the Affordable Care Act? I think we can. How about Bart Stupak? And remember those crazy dreams we had about the public option that would have forced the insurance companies to compete? Where was Joe Lieberman on that? Christopher Dodd, where were you when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was defanged and deep sixxed as an “interim affiliation” of the Treasury Department run by Tim Geithner, a guy who hated Elizabeth Warren? Shall I go on?

For far too long, Democrats have been calling us up, asking for money, scaring us about what would happen to the economy and reproductive rights if the Republicans got control. Finally, after all our contributions, phone banking, canvassing and advocacy for them, they got what they wanted. And instead of actually defending the values their constituents thought were important, they acted all helpless. I mean, what did we expect from them? They only had all the power they needed. Don’t even get me started about how they threw their base under the bus and rigged the primaries so they could benefit from all that financial industry cash that would be flooding into the DNC coffers in 2008. What was it again? $28,000 per donor? That might account for the substitution of student council president type congressional candidates for more liberal candidates in 2008. Maybe that’s why Eric Massa and Anthony Weiner had to go and why Charlie Rangel had to be sidelined. They were made examples of what would happen if others acted on their more Democratic impulses. It all makes sense now.

I don’t know what’s more laughable, that the bankers’ are pissed that the OWS movement may give them real competition for the money of the 99%, forcing them to compete for that money in a free market, capitalist manner for a change, or that the Democrats think that a pathetic letter of support is going to help them win elections next year.

It’s too late. You can’t be trusted. You’ve let the middle class down so badly it is unforgivable. The OWS movement is making people think that maybe there is a way out of this economic and political trap they’re in and that the solution doesn’t include Democrats.

We’re walking out of this relationship and even though we don’t know what the future holds, it feels good to be free.

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In such ways, the two warring tribes are trained to hate each other. That 99 percent disappears real fast as these cards keep getting dealt. Just like that, we’re back to a 50/50 nation. In that world, the one percent wins.

If you have any doubt that Bank of America is in trouble, this development should settle it. I’m late to this important story broken this morning by Bob Ivry of Bloomberg, but both Bill Black (who I interviewed just now) and I see this as a desperate (or at the very best, remarkably inept) move by Bank of America’s management.

The short form via Bloomberg:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation…

Bank of America’s holding company — the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit — held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.

Is $79 trillion a real number? How could one entity hold $79 trillion? Isn’t the national debt only $14 trillion?

This is starting to look like some bad subprogram that keeps adding zeros to a number. Jeez, and Geithner was supposed to have drawn up plans to shutter Citibank and didn’t do it. How much crap is Citibank sitting on?

So, the stress tests weren’t rigorous enough, Obama’s economics and treasury people blew off Sheila Bair and now we’re on the hook for trillions of dollars? uh-uh. This time, there will be haircuts.

Bloomberg reported that number, and it’s coming from the U.S. Treasury, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
That’s a scary number. It was derivatives that sank AIG.
And Wall Street is all worried and demanding that Washington cut back spending because the U.S. government owes $14 trillions, chump change in light of what Wall Street leverages with nothing to back up the debt.

You got it. Compared to this our current national debt is chump change. It seems like almost a distraction from these derivatives which could sink the whole world to even think about our “huge?” national debt.

Are there Democrats whose good intentions can be trusted? I think there are still some. They are the legacy-Democrats who voted against NAFTA, WTO membership “for” America, and MFN status for China. (People who were against NAFTA right from the start deserve the same respect today as people who were against Obama right from the start, I think; and for the same reasons. They saw the inner truth of the subject).

Now . . . can those legacy Democrats who were against Free Trade
be trusted as to their judgement? If the quite the Democratic Party en masse to form a “Real Democrat” Party of their own, rigidly excluding any person who supports Free Trade in any form, then their judgement can be trusted as well as their good intentions.

Free Trade is the new Slavery. Protectionism is the new Abolition.
I will not vote for any office-seeker who does not agree with that.

It’s unfortunate, but even votes can’t be trusted. I’ve seen it too many times when a representative/senator is allowed by the leaders to vote against or for a bill to make political points. I know that there’s no good Democrat because when it counted to get a good piece of legislation, like health care, congress went along with what Obama wanted. Passing the bill was more important than not allowing the health care industry to rape the tax payers. There’s no good Democrat or Republican in Washington. They all need to be removed.

You raise a good point. I have read “vote permission” to humor and fool the “folks at home” is often granted to one or another officeholder. Is it always the case?

I dimly remember during the unfolding “pass NAFTA” conspiracy,
the Clintonite Forces exerted extreme pressure against economic-patriot Democrats to vote against America by voting for NAFTA. (No.
I won’t get over it.) Some gave in, some did not. I don’t believe any
Democrats who voted for America by voting against NAFTA were merely pretending as per permission from the Leadership. That is why
I think any Democxratidc officeholders who put America ahead of Free Trade in their votes at that time might still be trustworthy as people today. (However, I would have to see which of them voted for the “three little NAFTAs” just a few days ago.)

I will need to see whether my Representative John Dingell voted against the “three little NAFTAs” or not. If he did, I do not have that
reason to vote against our beloved Dingellsaurus paleocraticus in his
next election.

Many of the so-called “progressive caucus” House Democratic officeholders who ended up voting for the Baucus-Obama forced mandate bill did so under various kinds of heavy pressure. Some of that pressure was the psychological blackmail and extortion involved
in “not destroying Obama’s Democratic Presidency”. Those Democrats are little tragic figures illustrating the greater tragedy of the””real Democrats”. They remain psychologically loyal to a party which went extinct everywhere outside their own minds several decades ago. They will remain loyal to the “Democratic Party” even
after a critical tipping-point massload of American Citizens finally
recoil in permanent disgust from the DLC-Third Way sewage lagoon which the so-called “Democratic Party” has become. They will perish politically along with the so-called “Democratic Party”, at least at the national level.

The first story relating to OWS that I completely agree with…that would be the message to both DEMS and Repubs…YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS…but then again, we know they can ’cause we got Obama out of it!

Struggling with Links, Blockquotes, images or videos?

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Readers, I’m sorry I missed Water Cooler Monday. Perhaps it would be simplest to say I was trapped in a chrono-synclastic infundibulum. TPP Lori Wallach on the leaked investment chapter [Eyes on Trade (PDF)]. The tribunals would be empowered to order payment of unlimited government funds to foreign investors over […] […]

Body: This paper, or pre-draft, or sketch, or whatever it is, started out with this title: "With The 12-Point Platform, this won't happen: An aristocracy of credentialism in the 20%." But then I realized I'd gotten in deeper than I thought -- one of those posts were the framework and the notes overwhelm the original idea -- and as it tur […]